In today’s fast-moving digital world, it’s harder than ever for businesses to grab and hold onto people’s attention. With so many brands competing for consumers’ limited attention spans, it’s crucial for companies to get creative with their marketing strategies.
So how do you cut through the noise and truly connect with your audience? That’s where explainer videos come in as a powerful tool.
Whether you’re a tech startup explaining a groundbreaking innovation or a local bakery showcasing your treats, explainer videos can help.
Animation offers a dynamic way to engage viewers, simplify complex ideas, and more.
But why should YOU invest in this innovative marketing strategy? Let’s explore four compelling reasons why explainer videos deserve a starring role in your marketing strategy.
This playlist features some of our best examples of explainer animations for marketing, sales and more.
1. Animations Capture Attention and Boost Engagement
Let’s start by defining engagement. (Yes, yes…we’re sick of the marketing buzzwords too.)
But the truth is, engagement is important – especially for companies with online marketplaces and a significant digital presence.
Let’s focus on the central word, engage: to engage means to involve, occupy, or attract another person’s attention. Engaging your audience is absolutely crucial, whether your objectives are awareness, sales, or action.
Without that first spark of engagement, your exceptional solution or opportunity doesn’t even reach your audience’s ears.
If your main playing field is digital marketing, you measure engagement in terms of audience behaviors such as views, shares, likes, and comments.
Animated explainer videos outperform text-based content in user preference every time. In fact, making the good choice to incorporate video is popular: 88% of marketers believe video marketing is an important part of their strategy.
But beyond that, an explainer video opens up so many opportunities to really connect with your audience in a way that other content cannot replicate.
How does animation improve engagement?
- Human to human connection: including a narration and a thoughtfully selected voiceover artist allows you to literally speak directly to your audience.
- Attention grabbing: the presentation of explainer videos is a key factor in their efficacy; as this article states, engaging storytelling attracts one’s attention.
- Tailored for your community: choosing the style is an opportunity to show your target audience how well you understand them! The style of your video can help create the identity you want, and connect with your viewers the way you want.
- Clear asks: Finally, video allows you to clearly lay out your story – whatever it may be – and conclude with a strong call to action. They can be extremely persuasive and create meaningful engagement for your organization – whether that’s smashing the like button or picking up the phone to connect with a real human.
2. Explainer Videos Simplify Complex Ideas and Improve Understanding
Let’s face it: engagement isn’t exactly straightforward when your message isn’t some sexy product. You might need to share important information about something people tend to consider ‘blah’, and make it feel SUPER – which is no easy feat.
Fortunately, explainer videos are super enough to come to the rescue.
This article names clarity, time efficiency, and versatility as just a few of the superpowers of explainer videos. We agree, after thirteen years witnessing successful messaging campaigns with animated video: from fundraising, to sales, to training across a global workforce.
It’s all because of the unique medium of the explainer video: by leveraging narrative with clarifying visuals, you can truly get your idea across in lightning time while still retaining clarity.
Explainer videos have a positive impact on retention and recall; learn more about why video-based learning is effective in this blog article.
3. Explainer Videos Boost Conversions and Drive Sales
When a user interacts with your company in a specific, desired way – such as making a purchase, filling out a form, or registering for an event.
This article from Wyzowl vouches for the ROI of video marketing, including one scenario where Dropbox turned a failed marketing campaign around using explainer videos – ultimately generating $48 million extra in revenue via a 10% conversion rate!!
The term conversion can apply to any desired action you want your audience to make. And the potential impact video can have on conversion stretches far beyond sales.
Advertiser and Lead Generation expert Amit Jethva offers a compelling list of the ways explainer videos can increase sales:
• videos contribute to a reduced bounce rate, keeping traffic on your website for longer
• animations are easily shareable, increasing your chances for making another conversion
• people buy from people: an animation can add personality to your business and promote increased relationship building with your audience
We created this explainer animation to demonstrate how we create compelling narratives for our whiteboard videos.
4. Explainer Videos Have a High ROI & are Cost Effective Marketing
When it comes to traditional marketing, you aren’t going to find a medium with a higher ROI than video. Here are three big reasons why:
- Easy to update
- Easy to distribute
- Easy to scale
Animated explainer videos lower the cost of your overhead by providing a tool that can be easily brought up to speed with the changes your organization is constantly going through – no need to re-shoot footage or reinvent the wheel.
Furthermore, it’s cheap and easy to scale your message to everyone who needs to hear it. Whether building training modules for your organization in multiple languages, or offering captions for your video in multiple languages to promote accessibility, you can rely on animation for versatility at an affordable price.
Straightforward to translate, update, and edit, explainer videos are an excellent way to break down your most complex messages in an evergreen format.
Which Companies Need Explainer Videos the Most?
We may be a little biased, but we truly believe nearly any industry can benefit from the persuasive power of explainer videos. Let’s explore why each sectors might find explainer videos particularly advantageous – and we’ve even thrown in some examples to inspire you!
